Steve Jobs described the textbook business as an $8 billion a year industry “ripe for digital destruction.” The scientific publication business resembles the textbook industry in many ways, including lack of value-creation Jobs was referring to. The Research Works Act (HR 3699) is the scientific publication industry’s surest path to digital destruction. Every scientist who cares about the future of scientific communication should support it.
Yes, I’m encouraging support for this bill, and no, I’m not being ironic. Read on to find out why.
The Slow Decline of the Scientific Publication Business.
The advent of desktop publishing and the Web has utterly disrupted the business model of scientific publishers. Before these technologies were widely available, publishers added tremendous value to the scientific publication process through editing, typesetting, peer-review, aggregation of content, printing onto paper, distribution, archival, and imprimatur.
With the exception of imprimatur, a key concept discussed below, nothing scientific publishers are currently doing today adds any value to the process that can’t be cheaply (and increasingly - freely) obtained elsewhere.
At a time in which scientific publishers are adding less and less value to the process, you might think that journal prices would be decreasing as well. Instead, the opposite has happened with journal prices rising faster than the rate of inflation for many years running. Simultaneously, library budgets are being repeatedly cut due to lackluster public funding for science and a multi-year economic slump.
Those who have been paying attention know that a process of culling the weakest of the traditional scientific journals has been underway for the last ten years as research libraries are squeezed between the irresistible forces of shrinking funds and rising costs.
Yes, I’m encouraging support for this bill, and no, I’m not being ironic. Read on to find out why.
The Slow Decline of the Scientific Publication Business.
The advent of desktop publishing and the Web has utterly disrupted the business model of scientific publishers. Before these technologies were widely available, publishers added tremendous value to the scientific publication process through editing, typesetting, peer-review, aggregation of content, printing onto paper, distribution, archival, and imprimatur.
With the exception of imprimatur, a key concept discussed below, nothing scientific publishers are currently doing today adds any value to the process that can’t be cheaply (and increasingly - freely) obtained elsewhere.
At a time in which scientific publishers are adding less and less value to the process, you might think that journal prices would be decreasing as well. Instead, the opposite has happened with journal prices rising faster than the rate of inflation for many years running. Simultaneously, library budgets are being repeatedly cut due to lackluster public funding for science and a multi-year economic slump.
Those who have been paying attention know that a process of culling the weakest of the traditional scientific journals has been underway for the last ten years as research libraries are squeezed between the irresistible forces of shrinking funds and rising costs.
